Pomegranate Seeds 2/10

On August 26th Muse released their ninth album, “Will of the People”, This was the first album from Muse that I’ve heard and it does not encourage further exploration of their discography. It may be their worst album yet.

The title track of the album destroyed my expectations and changed my listening experience . The song sounded as if it was made specifically for a truck commercial and nothing else. Just bland and generic. Track two, “Compliance”, has this ear piercing synth and cringey lyrics. It come the perspective of a big corporation controlling its subjects. The biggest song of the album, “Won’t Stand Down”, has good moments with the heavy sounding guitar and ok lyrics. The track is dragged down sounding like a bad Imagine Dragons song.

The second half of the album starts off with the best song on the album is easily, “Kill or be Killed”. This track is what the rest of the album could have been. It contains heavy riffs and fast paced drumming. The song also mixes the electronic sounds well. The songs, “You Make Me Feel Likes It’s Halloween” and, “Verona” are love songs. Both are alright but they feel very out of place with overall theme of the album, which is coming together and fighting system. What system specifically? They don’t say. Speaking on the theme, most of the songs that reflect it feel very generic and soulless. To me they do not convey that Muse actually feel true to a cause. The final song the album and easily the worst is, “We’re F****** F******”, it is unlistenable to most people. It starts off alright but the chorus sounds atrocious. The lyrics contain a bleak message but it’s presentation ruins the entire song and ends the album on a bad note.

The band being formed in 1994 is now 26 years old. It makes sense that an old band would try to switch up their sound and do something new. I can commend them for that even though for the most part I believe they failed. Overall this album gets a 2/10. I suggest just listening to Rage Against the Machine if you want music that contains the theme of being against the system.